LVII.

Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar, (30) Like Scipio, buried by the upbraiding shore; (31) Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore Their children's children would in vain adore With the remorse of ages; and the crown (32) Which Petrarch's laureate brow supremely wore, Upon a far and foreign soil had grown,

His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled-not thine own.

LVIII.

Boccaccio to his parent earth bequeath'd (33) His dust, and lies it not her Great among, With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed O'er him who form'd the Tuscan's siren tongue? That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech? No;-even his tomb Uptorn, must bear the hyæna bigots wrong, No more amidst the meaner dead find room, Nor claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom !

LIX.

And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust; Yet for this want more noted, as of yore The Cæsar's pageant, shorn of Brutus' bust, Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more : Happier Ravenna! on thy hoary shore, Fortress of falling empire! honour'd sleeps The immortal exile ;- —Arqua, too, her store Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, While Florence vainly begs her banish'd dead and weeps.

LX.

What is her pyramid of precious stones.? (34) Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones Of merchant-dukes? the momentary dews Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead, Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse, Are gently prest with far more reverent tread Than ever paced the slab which paves the princely head.

LXI.

There be more things to greet the heart and eyes In Arno's dome of Art's most princely shrine, Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies; There be more marvels yet-but not for mine; For I have been accustom'd to entwine

My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields, Than Art in galleries: though a work divine Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields.

LXII.

Is of another temper, and I roam
By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles

Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home;
For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles
Come back before me, as his skill beguiles
The host between the mountains and the shore,
Where Courage falls in her despairing files,
And torrents, swoln to rivers with their gore,
Reek through the sultry plain, with legions scat-
ter'd o'er,

LXIII.

Like to a forest fell'd by mountain winds;
And such the storm of battle on this day,

And such the phrenzy, whose convulsion blinds To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray, An earthquake reel'd unheededly away! (35) None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet, And yawning forth a grave for those who lay Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet; Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations meet!

LXIV.

The Earth to them was as a rolling bark
Which bore them to Eternity; they saw
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark
The motions of their vessel; Nature's law,
In them suspended, reck'd not of the awe
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the
birds

Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing herds

Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath no words.

LXV.

Far other scene is Thrasimene now;
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough;
Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain
Lay where their roots are; but a brook hath ta'en,
A little rill of scanty stream and bed-

A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain;
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead

Made the earth wet, and turn'd the unwilling waters red.

LXVI.

But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave (36) Of the most living crystal that was e'er

The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer
Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters!
And most serene of aspect, and most clear;

Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters, A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daugh

ters!

LXVII.

And on thy happy shore a temple still,
Of small and delicate proportion keeps,
Upon a mild declivity of hill,

Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps
Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps
The finny darter with the glittering scales,
Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps;
While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails,
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bub-
bling tales.

LXVIII.

Pass not unblest the Genius of the place!
If through the air a zephyr more serene
Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace
Along his margin a more eloquent green,
If on the heart the freshness of the scene
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust
Of weary life a moment lave it clean
With Nature's baptism,—'tis to him ye must
Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust.

LXIX.

The roar of waters!-from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
The fall of waters! rapid as the light
The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss

The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,

LXX.

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,

Making it all one emerald:-how profound
The gulf! and how the giant element

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
Crushing the cliffs, which downward worn and

rent

With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful

vent

LXXI.

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers which flow gushingly,
With many windings, through the vale:-Look
back!

Lo! where it comes like an eternity,
As if to sweep down all things in its track,
Charming the eye with dread,—a matchles cataract,
(37).

LXXII.

Horribly beautiful! but on the verge,

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, (38) Like Hope upon a death-bed, and unworn